ll. We shall see what we shall see.

X

A CHAPTER OF THRILLS

The hotel at Tenda is apparently the one new thing in the town, and it
is new enough to more than make up for the oldness of everything else.
We went there to grumble because, after we had done the ruined castle
(and it had done Mamma), Joseph's "all little" hour threatened to
lengthen itself into at lest two of ordinary size.

Mr. Barrymore's eyebrows said, "I told you so," but his tongue said
nothing, which was nice of it; and the Prince did all the complaining as
we sat on perfectly new chairs, in a perfectly new parlour, with a smell
of perfectly new plaster in the air, and plu-perfectly old newspapers on
the table. According to him, Joseph was an absolutely unique villain,
with a combination of deceit, treachery, procrastination, laziness, and
stupidity mixed with low cunning, such as could not be paralleled in the
history of motor-men; and it was finally Mr. Barrymore who defended the
poor absent wretch.

"Really, you know," said he, "I don't think he's worse than other
chauffeurs. Curiously enough, the whole tribe seems to be alike in
several characteristics, and it would be an interesting study in motor
lore to discover whether they've all--by a singular coincidence--been
born with those peculiarities, whether they've been thrust upon them, or
whether they've achieved them!"

"Joseph never achieved anything," broke in the Prince.

"That disposes of one point of view, then," went on Mr. Barrymore.
"Anyhow, he's cut on an approved pattern. All the professional
chauffeurs I ever met have been utterly unable to calculate time or
provide for future emergencies. They're pessimists at the moment of an
accident, and optimists afterwards--until they find out their mistakes
by gloomy experience, which, however, seldom teaches them anything."

The Prince shrugged his shoulders in a superior way he has, and drawled,
"Well, you are better qualified to judge the brotherhood, than the rest
of us, at all events, my dear sir."

Mr. Barrymore got rather red, but he only laughed and answered, "Yes,
that's why I spoke in Joseph's defence. A fellow-feeling makes us
wondrous kind," while Maida looked as if she would like to set the new
dog at His Highness.

The fact is she has got into her head that our handsome chauffeur is
very unfortunate; and when Maida is sorry for anybody or anything she'll
stick by that creature--man, woman, or dog--through thick